Purpose

What is your purpose? Why are you here? Why are any of us here? Those are questions people have asked for as long as people have been around. We need to know why. Why is that? Why does it matter if we have a purpose or not?

Rusted barrel against the garden shed – Safe Haven Farm, Haven, KS

Today’s verse is Ecclesiasties 3: 11.

Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.

Ecclesiasties is a really interesting book. Hardcore but interesting. It’s one of those books that if you aren’t careful you can very easily take statements out of context because it’s Solomon searching for answers. And in his search for answers, he makes some pretty big mistakes and some pretty grand assumptions about life in general. Not all of them are true. And he learns that at the end, but when he’s in the thick of it all, it’s hard for him to see the truth.

This passage comes briefly after the one where he is stating that there is a time for everything, whether it’s dying or laughing or harvesting or war. And actually the rest of this passage is him pretty much just stating that what God decides is final and there’s nothing we can do about it. And that we can’t know God’s plan, so we might as well make the most out of life.

And I suppose that is true. We are limited in what we know about God’s plans, but we aren’t limited in what we know about God. We know all we need to know about God because the Bible provides that doorway for us. We have access to who God is through Jesus and through the Holy Spirit and through the truth of Scripture.

Knowing who God is makes a world of difference when you’re looking for purpose. I was discussing this with a friend over the weekend. God is orderly. He is organized. He is structured. There is no chaos in Him. So knowing that God is a God of order and purpose means that there is an order and a purpose to all of our lives. Even if we can’t see the end result of that order and purpose, we know it’s there.

I was curious about the statement that God has set eternity in our hearts. That’s beautiful. Quite poetic. But what does it mean? Well, according to the Amplified Bible, it means this: “a divinely implanted sense of a purpose working through the ages which nothing under the sun but God alone can satisfy.”

You’ve heard the phrase that we all have a “God-shaped hole” inside our hearts? That’s what this is. God created each of us with a purpose. But it’s not just an everyday kind of purpose. It’s an eternal purpose. It’s the reason we were made. And an eternal purpose can’t be found outside of God and His plan. And until we embrace God and His Word and the fact that He made us for a reason, we aren’t going to be able to find that purpose. And until we find our purpose, we’re going to keep asking why we’re here.

I think that’s why so many people are lost, wandering around, not knowing who they are or why they matter. How can we know who we are or why we matter if we believe that God isn’t important? Or that He doesn’t exist?

I’m a practical person, objective-focus and goal-oriented. If I didn’t have a purpose, I wouldn’t get out of bed. If I didn’t have a reason to live, I wouldn’t. But I do. And that purpose was given to me by Someone who is orderly and good, and it’s a purpose that will last forever.

I don’t know God’s purpose for your life, but I know His purpose for mine. I’m here to do what He asks me to do. I’m here to live the way the Bible says, and I’m here to bring glory to Him. That’s my purpose. And as many ways as I can bring Him glory, I will, whether it’s through writing or loving others or quietly accepting blame when I don’t deserve it and trusting that He will reveal the truth in time. My purpose is to live for His glory. Every action, every thought, every accomplishment is for Him. And anything I plan to do, if I use it to praise Him, He will use it to help others.

I don’t think there’s anything better than that.